England 45 Ireland 11
|
|
Crestfallen Ireland players leave the field at half-time (© Reuters) |
Any illusions Ireland might have had that they are ready to challenge the best were quickly and emphatically put to rest by England at Twickenham this afternoon.
The defeat in Dublin last October clearly hurt England and they upped their performance accordingly and during the last 20 minutes of the first-half they ran in four tries as Ireland were starved of possession.
England attacked the Irish fringes and found holes with alarming ease. With Ireland running backwards to make the cover tackles England quickly moved the ball wide to find overlaps and players in acres of space.
Jonny Wilkinson, who gave the England fans a virtuoso out-half performance, was the first to cross the line after 23 minutes.
The warning signs that Ireland needed to make their first-up tackles were ignored and England changed their angles of running to break clean through the Irish defence at will with Wilkinson rounding off a fabulous move as he cut back inside when the ball was moving wide.
Two minutes later Ireland were cut to pieces again and despite Denis Hickie making a try saving tackle England had men in support, one of whom was Ben Cohen who had journeyed off his left wing to score on the right.
Joe Worsely and Will Greenwood added two more tries to round off a near perfect 40 minutes. Ireland had just two David Humpreys penalties to take in with them to the break.
Eddie O’Sullivan had been talking all week about performance and Ireland needed to up theirs drastically in the second-half. With just four minutes gone in the second period, second row Ben Kay found himself on a one-on-one with David Humphreys. No contest and England were looking at a record score.
That they didn’t, will no doubt hurt them and that hurt speaks volumes about the difference in class that was on show.
Ireland, though, recovered somewhat and despite Will Greenwood scoring England’s sixth try, they began to dominate possession and territory.
Ronan O’Gara scored shortly after Greenwood’s try as Ireland patiently worked the ball left and right, probing the English line. When they were at full stretch O’Gara was able to breach the line to touch down with 20 minutes still to play.
While Ireland continued to look for more scores it was O’Gara’s try that was the last of the game.
Afterwards, O’Sullivan was frank about his teams performance. "We really lost the plot in the first-half. England dominated possession and position on the field and we gave them too much space," said O’Sullivan.
"It was a difficult first-half for us and the game was pretty much in the bag at half-time. We finished the game of well but, that was about the only positive for us, he added.